Friday, December 12, 2014

Our Lady of Guadalupe - Guadalupe, Mexico (1531) Patroness of the Americas
Feast Day in the USA - December 12th
The opening of the New World brought with it both fortune-seekers and religious preachers desiring to convert the native populations to the Christian
faith. One of the converts was a poor Aztec Indian named Juan Diego. On
one of his trips to the chapel, Juan was walking through the Tepayac hill
country in central Mexico. Near Tepayac Hill he encountered a beautiful
woman surrounded by a ball of light as bright as the sun. Speaking in
his native tongue, the beautiful lady identified herself:"My dear little son, I love you. I desire you to know who I am.
I am the ever-virgin Mary, Mother of the true God who gives life and maintains
its existence. He created all things. He is in all places. He is Lord
of Heaven and Earth. I desire a church in this place where your people
may experience my compassion. All those who sincerely ask my help in their
work and in their sorrows will know my Mother's Heart in this place. Here
I will see their tears; I will console them and they will be at peace.
So run now to Tenochtitlan and tell the Bishop all that you have seen
and heard."

Juan, age 57, and who had never been to Tenochtitlan, nonetheless immediately
responded to Mary's request. He went to the palace of the Bishop-elect
Fray Juan de Zumarraga and requested to meet immediately with the bishop.
The bishop's servants, who were suspicious of the rural peasant, kept
him waiting for hours. The bishop-elect told Juan that he would consider
the request of the Lady and told him he could visit him again if he so
desired. Juan was disappointed by the bishop's response and felt himself
unworthy to persuade someone as important as a bishop. He returned to
the hill where he had first met Mary and found her there waiting for him.
Imploring her to send someone else, she responded:"My little son, there are many I could send. But you are the one
I have chosen."
She then told him to return the next day to the bishop and repeat the
request. On Sunday, after again waiting for hours, Juan met with the bishop
who, on re-hearing his story, asked him to ask the Lady to provide a sign
as a proof of who she was. Juan dutifully returned to the hill and told
Mary, who was again waiting for him there, of the bishop's request. Mary
responded:"My little son, am I not your Mother? Do not fear. The Bishop shall
have his sign. Come back to this place tomorrow. Only peace, my little
son."

Unfortunately, Juan was not able to return to the hill the next day. His
uncle had become mortally ill and Juan stayed with him to care for him.
After two days, with his uncle near death, Juan left his side to find
a priest. Juan had to pass Tepayac Hill to get to the priest. As he was
passing, he found Mary waiting for him. She spoke: "Do not be distressed, my littlest son. Am I not here with you who
am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Your uncle
will not die at this time. There is no reason for you to engage a priest,
for his health is restored at this moment. He is quite well. Go to the
top of the hill and cut the flowers that are growing there. Bring them
then to me."

While it was freezing on the hillside, Juan obeyed Mary's instructions
and went to the top of the hill where he found a full bloom of Castilian
roses. Removing his tilma, a poncho-like cape made of cactus fiber, he
cut the roses and carried them back to Mary. She rearranged the roses
and told him: "My little son, this is the sign I am sending to the Bishop. Tell
him that with this sign I request his greatest efforts to complete the
church I desire in this place. Show these flowers to no one else but the
Bishop. You are my trusted ambassador. This time the Bishop will believe
all you tell him."

At the palace, Juan once again came before the bishop and several of his advisers. He told the bishop his story and opened the tilma letting the
flowers fall out. But it wasn't the beautiful roses that caused the bishop
and his advisers to fall to their knees; for there, on the tilma, was
a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary precisely as Juan had described her.
The next day, after showing the Tilma at the Cathedral, Juan took the
bishop to the spot where he first met Mary. He then returned to his village
where he met his uncle who was completely cured. His uncle told him he
had met a young woman, surrounded by a soft light, who told him that she
had just sent his nephew to Tenochtitlan with a picture of herself. She
told his uncle: "Call me and call my image Santa Maria de Guadalupe".
It's believed that the word Guadalupe was actually a Spanish mis-translation
of the local Aztec dialect. The word that Mary probably used was Coatlallope
which means "one who treads on snakes"! Within six years of
this apparition, six million Aztecs had converted to Catholicism. The
tilma shows Mary as the God-bearer - she is pregnant with her Divine Son.
Since the time the tilma was first impressed with a picture of the Mother
of God, it has been subject to a variety of environmental hazards including
smoke from fires and candles, water from floods and torrential downpours
and, in 1921, a bomb which was planted by anti-clerical forces on an altar
under it. There was also a cast-iron cross next to the tilma and when
the bomb exploded, the cross was twisted out of shape, the marble altar
rail was heavily damaged and the tilma was ... untouched! Indeed, no one
was injured in the Church despite the damage that occurred to a large
part of the altar structure.

In 1977, the tilma was examined using infrared photography and digital
enhancement techniques. Unlike any painting, the tilma shows no sketching
or any sign of outline drawn to permit an artist to produce a painting.
Further, the very method used to create the image is still unknown. The
image is inexplicable in its longevity and method of production. It can
be seen today in a large cathedral built to house up to ten thousand worshipers.
It is, by far, the most popular religious pilgrimage site in the Western
Hemisphere.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

"That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of
those that are in Heaven, on earth and under the earth: And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father."~Philippians 2:10-11

Christ Himself speaks of His Own kingly authority in His last discourse, speaking of the
rewards and punishments that will
be
the eternal lot of the just and the damned; in His reply to the Roman
magistrate,
who asked Him publicly whether He were a king or not; after His
resurrection,
when giving to His Apostles the mission of teaching and Baptizing all
nations,
He took the opportunity to call Himself king, confirming the title
publicly, and solemnly proclaimed that all power was given Him in
Heaven
and on earth. These words can only be taken to indicate the
greatness
of his power, the infinite extent of His kingdom. What wonder, then,
that
He Whom St. John calls the "prince of the kings of the earth"
appears
in the Apostle's vision of the future as He Who "hath on His garment
and
on His thigh written 'King of kings and Lord of lords!'." It is
Christ
Whom the Father "hath appointed heir of all things"; "for He must
reign
until at the end of the world He hath put all his enemies under the
feet
of God and the Father."
It was surely right, then, in view of the common teaching of the
sacred books, that the
Catholic Church, which is the kingdom of Christ on earth, destined
to be spread among all men and all nations, should with every token of
veneration salute her Author and Founder in her annual liturgy as King
and Lord, and as King of Kings. And, in fact, she used these titles,
giving
expression with wonderful variety of language to one and the same
concept,
both in ancient psalmody and in the Sacramentaries.

God made promises
to Father Abraham and King David. These promises are revealed in Genesis
22:16-18 and II Kings 7:10-19 respectively:

Genesis 22:16-18
By my own self have I sworn, saith the Lord: because thou hast done this
thing, and hast not spared thy only begotten son for my sake: I will bless
thee, and I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand
that is by the sea shore: thy seed shall possess the gates of their enemies.
And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou
hast obeyed my voice.

II Kings 7:10-19
And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, and
they shall dwell therein, and shall be disturbed no more: neither shall the
children of iniquity afflict them any more as they did before, from the day
that I appointed judges over my people Israel: and I will give thee rest
from all thy enemies. And the Lord foretelleth to thee, that the Lord will
make thee a house. And when thy days shall be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep
with thy fathers, I will raise up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed
out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house
to my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will
be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son: and if he commit any iniquity,
I will correct him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children
of men. But my mercy I will not take away from him, as I took it from Saul,
whom I removed from before my face. And thy house shall be faithful, and
thy kingdom for ever before thy face, and thy throne shall be firm for ever.
According to all these words and according to all this vision, so did Nathan
speak to David.

And David went in, and sat before the Lord, and said: Who am I, O Lord God,
and what is my house, that thou hast brought me thus far? But yet this hath
seemed little in thy sight, O Lord God, unless thou didst also speak of the
house of thy servant for a long time to come: for this is the law of Adam,
O Lord God.

These prophecies
are fulfilled in Christ, Who is King of Israel ("Christ" means "Anointed
One," and the anointing referred to is the anointing King David received).
Our Lord, though, is not only the ruler of the restored Davidic Kingdom (the
Church), but is the King of Kings -- the King of All. The only way for peace
to have a chance in this world is for all to see Him for Who He is: the King
before Whom we must bow and Whom we must obey.

Though this Feast is a new one, promulgated by Pope Pius XI in 1925 in his
Encyclical Quas Primas, it is a most
awesome and important one! Vive Christus Rex!
On this day, we pray for the conversion of all to Christ, and for all governments
to recognize Him as King and conform their laws to His teachings. This is
the only way to peace!

Apocalypse 19:15-16:
And out of his mouth proceedeth a sharp two-edged sword, that with it he
may strike the nations. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he
treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God the Almighty.
And he hath on his garment and on his thigh written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD
OF LORDS.

Today you may receive
a plenary indulgence by praying the Consecration of the Human Race to the
Sacred Heart, going to Confession, and receiving the Eucharist. We beg God
to bring all people to Him and to be our King.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the Feast
of Christ the King

Most sweet Jesus, Redeemer
of the human race, look down upon us humbly prostrate before Thine altar.
We are Thine, and Thine we wish to be; but, to be more surely united with
Thee, behold each one of us freely consecrates himself today to Thy most
Sacred Heart.
Many indeed have never known Thee; many too, despising Thy precepts, have
rejected Thee. Have mercy on them all, most merciful Jesus, and draw them
to Thy sacred Heart. Be Thou King, O Lord, not only of the faithful who have
never forsaken Thee, but also of the prodigal children who have abandoned
Thee; grant that they may quickly return to Thy Father's house lest they
die of wretchedness and hunger.
Be Thou King of those who are deceived by erroneous opinions, or whom discord
keeps aloof, and call them back to the harbor of truth and unity of faith,
so that there may be but one flock and one Shepherd.
Be Thou King of all those who are still involved in the darkness of idolatry
or of Islamism, and refuse not to draw them into the light and kingdom of
God. Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of the race, once Thy
chosen people: of old they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Savior;
may It now descend upon them a laver of redemption and of life.
Grant, O Lord, to Thy Church assurance of freedom and immunity from harm;
give peace and order to all nations, and make the earth resound from pole
to pole with one cry: "Praise be to the divine Heart that wrought our salvation;
to It be glory and honor for ever." Amen.

Please read about the Kingship
of Christ and come to understand the concept's absolute importance. Truly
pray the Mass -- at all times, but especially on this day. Pray the Consecration
with your whole heart!

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The
purpose of the rosary is to help us meditate on the great mysteries of
our salvation. Pius XII called it a compendium of the gospel. The main
focus is on Jesus—His birth, life, death and resurrection. The Our
Fathers remind us that Jesus' Father is the Initiator of salvation. The
Hail Marys remind us to join with Mary in contemplating these mysteries.
They also make us aware that Mary was and is intimately joined with her
Son in all the mysteries of His earthly and heavenly existence. The
Glory Be's remind us that the purpose of all life is the glory of the
Trinity.
The rosary appeals to many. It is simple. The constant repetition of
words helps create an atmosphere in which to contemplate the mysteries
of God. We sense that Jesus and Mary are with us in the joys and sorrows
of life. We grow in hope that God will bring us to share in the glory
of Jesus and Mary forever.

On October 7, the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the yearly
feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. Known for several centuries by the
alternate title of “Our Lady of Victory,” the feast day takes place in
honor of a 16th century naval victory which secured Europe against
Turkish invasion. Pope St. Pius V attributed the victory to the
intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was invoked on the day of
the battle through a campaign to pray the Rosary throughout Europe.
The feast always occurs one week after the similar Byzantine
celebration of the Protection of the Mother of God, which most Eastern
Orthodox Christians and Eastern Catholics celebrate on October 1 in
memory of a 10th-century military victory which protected Constantinople
against invasion after a reported Marian apparition.
Pope Leo XIII was particularly devoted to Our Lady of the Rosary,
producing 11 encyclicals on the subject of this feast and its importance
in the course of his long pontificate.
In the first of them, 1883's “Supremi Apostolatus Officio,” he echoed
the words of the oldest known Marian prayer (known in the Latin
tradition as the “Sub Tuum Praesidium”), when he wrote, “It has always
been the habit of Catholics in danger and in troublous times to fly for
refuge to Mary.” “This devotion, so great and so confident, to the august Queen of
Heaven,” Pope Leo continued, “has never shone forth with such brilliancy
as when the militant Church of God has seemed to be endangered by the
violence of heresy … or by an intolerable moral corruption, or by the
attacks of powerful enemies.” Foremost among such “attacks” was the
battle of Lepanto, a perilous and decisive moment in European and world
history.
Troops of the Turkish Ottoman Empire had invaded and occupied the
Byzantine empire by 1453, bringing a large portion of
the increasingly
divided Christian world under a version of Islamic law. For the next
hundred years, the Turks expanded their empire westward on land, and
asserted their naval power in the Mediterranean. In 1565 they attacked
Malta, envisioning an eventual invasion of Rome. Though repelled at
Malta, the Turks captured Cyprus in the fall of 1570.
The next year, three Catholic powers on the continent – Genoa, Spain,
and the Papal States - formed an alliance called the Holy League, to
defend their Christian civilization against Turkish invasion. Its fleets
sailed to confront the Turks near the west coast of Greece on October
7, 1571.
Crew members on more than 200 ships prayed the Rosary in preparation
for the battle - as did Christians throughout Europe, encouraged by the
Pope to gather in their churches to invoke the Virgin Mary against the
daunting Turkish forces.

Some accounts say that Pope Pius V was granted a miraculous vision of
the Holy League's stunning victory. Without a doubt, the Pope
understood the significance of the day's events, when he was eventually
informed that all but 13 of the nearly 300 Turkish ships had been
captured or sunk. He was moved to institute the feast now celebrated
universally as Our Lady of the Rosary.
“Turkish victory at Lepanto would have been a catastrophe of the
first magnitude for Christendom,” wrote military historian John F.
Guilmartin, Jr., “and Europe would have followed a historical trajectory
strikingly different from that which obtained.”

A second victory gained that year on the Octave of the Assumption
determined Pope Clement XI to command the Feast of the Rosary to be
celebrated by the universal Church. Leo XIII added the invocation "Queen
of the most Holy Rosary, pray for us," to the Litany of Loretto. The
Feast is in reality a great festival of thanksgiving for the signal and
countless benefits bestowed on Christendom through the Rosary of our
blessed Queen.
In modern times successive popes have urged the
faithful to pray the Rosary. It is a form of contemplative prayer,
mental and vocal prayer, which brings down God’s blessing on the Church.
It is a biblically inspired prayer which is centered on meditation on
the salvific mysteries of Christ in union with Mary, who was so closely
associated with her Son in his redeeming activity.

"Oh Mary, conceived without sin, please pray for us who have recourse to thee and protect us in the mantle of your love until our beloved Savior Jesus returns in power and great glory to rule forever and ever. Amen."

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Francis
of Assisi was a poor little man who astounded and inspired the Church
by taking the gospel literally—not in a narrow fundamentalist sense, but
by actually following all that Jesus said and did, joyfully, without
limit and without a sense of self-importance.
Serious illness brought the young Francis to see the emptiness of his
frolicking life as leader of Assisi's youth. Prayer—lengthy and
difficult—led him to a self-emptying like that of Christ, climaxed by
embracing a leper he met on the road. It symbolized his complete
obedience to what he had heard in prayer: "Francis! Everything you have
loved and desired in the flesh it is your duty to despise and hate, if
you wish to know my will. And when you have begun this, all that now
seems sweet and lovely to you will become intolerable and bitter, but
all that you used to avoid will turn itself to great sweetness and
exceeding joy."

From the cross in the neglected field-chapel of
San Damiano, Christ told him, "Francis, go out and build up my house,
for it is nearly falling down." Francis became the totally poor and
humble workman.
He must have suspected a deeper meaning to "build
up my house." But he would have been content to be for the rest of his
life the poor "nothing" man actually putting brick on brick in abandoned
chapels. He gave up all his possessions, piling even his clothes before
his earthly father (who was demanding restitution for Francis' "gifts"
to the poor) so that he would be totally free to say, "Our Father in
heaven." He was, for a time, considered to be a religious fanatic,
begging from door to door when he could not get money for his work,
evoking sadness or disgust to the hearts of his former friends, ridicule
from the unthinking.

But genuineness will tell. A few people
began to realize that this man was actually trying to be Christian. He
really believed

what Jesus said: "Announce the kingdom! Possess no gold
or silver or copper in your purses, no traveling bag, no sandals, no
staff" (Luke 9:1-3).

Francis' first rule for his followers was a
collection of texts from the Gospels. He had no idea of founding an
order, but once it began he protected it and accepted all the legal
structures needed to support it. His devotion and loyalty to the Church
were absolute and highly exemplary at a time when various movements of
reform tended to break the Church's unity.
He was torn between a
life devoted entirely to prayer and a life of active preaching of the
Good News. He decided in favor of the latter, but always returned to
solitude when he could. He wanted to be a missionary in Syria or in
Africa, but was prevented by shipwreck and illness in both cases. He did
try to convert the sultan of Egypt during the Fifth Crusade.
During
the last years of his relatively short life (he died at 44), he was
half blind and seriously ill. Two years before his death, he received
the stigmata, the real and painful wounds of Christ in his hands, feet
and side.

On his deathbed, he said over and over again the last
addition to his Canticle of the Sun, "Be praised, O Lord, for our Sister
Death." He sang Psalm 141, and at the end asked his superior to have
his clothes removed when the last hour came and for permission to expire
lying naked on the earth, in imitation of his Lord.

Francis
of Assisi was poor only that he might be Christ-like. He recognized
creation as another manifestation of the beauty of God. In 1979, he was
named patron of ecology. He did great penance (apologizing to "Brother
Body" later in life) that he might be totally disciplined for the will
of God. His poverty had a sister, humility, by which he meant total
dependence on the good God. But all this was, as it were, preliminary to
the heart of his spirituality: living the gospel life, summed up in the
charity of Jesus and perfectly expressed in the Eucharist.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Saint
Germaine Cousin was born in 1579 in Pibrac, a small village not far
from Toulouse, France. From her earliest years she was a frail, sickly
child, and throughout her life was afflicted with scrofula, a tubercular
condition affecting particularly the glands of the neck. In addition,
her right arm and hand were deformed and partially paralyzed. In spite
of her many afflictions, the emaciated child possessed a charming, sweet
disposition. Germaine endured not only bodily sufferings, but harsh,
cruel treatment from her stepmother, who had a deep aversion for the
little girl. The child was almost starved to death and obliged to sleep
in the barn on a pile of leaves and twigs under the stairway. At break
of day, summer and winter, she would drive the sheep into the fields to
graze, then watch them until evening. She had to spin during this time,
and if the allotted wool was not spun, she was severely punished.

The
village children, not sharing the hostility of the adults toward this
forlorn child, loved to listen to her speak about the goodness and love
of God while she guarded her flock. The only instruction Germaine ever
received was the catechism taught after Sunday Mass in the village
church, which she attended with joy. During the long hours of solitude
she spent in the fields and in the stable at night, she remained in
sweet communion with God, and never complained of her hard life.

Germaine's heart was full of charity for
others. Beggars would come to her for sympathy and to share the scraps
of bread which she had. When Madame Cousin heard about this she would
often beat Germaine while screaming, "I'm not going to feed
every tramp that passes by." Then one cold winter day Germaine
went into the kitchen to get some scraps for her hungry friends, when
suddenly her stepmother walked in. The angry woman thought the girl was
carrying some bread in her apron.

She grabbed a stick and chased the girl to
an open area, hoping to prove to all that Germaine was a thief. Armand
demanded that Germaine open her apron. The frightened girl did and suddenly
a wonderful miracle took place. Instead of scraps of bread, a bunch of
beautiful, fresh flowers, not from that area, tumbled to the ground! This
only increased the admiration and love of the villagers towards Germaine,
and stepmother was shown to be a tyrant. Other miracles too were reported,
which proved that God showered His blessings on the poor girl. It was
reported that the barn where she slept was flooded with light at night
and that heavenly singing was heard by those passing by.

Finally after almost twenty years of neglect
and abuse, Lawrence Cousin put his foot down and demanded that Germaine's
living conditions be changed for the better. He apologized for his neglect
and asked the girl to take her place inside the house and live with the
family. But Germaine told her father, "Papa, I am perfectly
happy living in the barn." In living alone and in suffering,
the girl found Jesus and would not exchange Him for the comforts of the
world!

Germaine's years of prayers and sacrifices
finally began to change the heart of the cruel stepmother. Armand was
not given much time to make up for the past years of her wicked treatment
towards the poor girl. Germaine's life was now coming to an end; her illnesses
had worn her out and she had little strength left.

In the spring of 1601, a priest was traveling
to the city of Toulouse. It was night when he reached the town of Pibrac
and he

could hardly see his way in the darkness. Suddenly a beautiful
brightness lit up the sky and the priest saw a vision of a beautiful procession
of virgins in brilliant light, coming down from Heaven into the village
of Pibrac. Then he saw a virgin going up to Heaven, who was wearing a
brilliant crown, in the company of many angels that were brighter than
the stars. That same night, two religious, also having lost their way
in the darkness, saw the same vision as well. But neither the priest nor
the two religious understood the meaning of the lovely vision.

In the morning, Lawrence could hear the sheep
bleating and realized that Germaine had not taken them out as she had
done in the past eighteen years. "Germaine," he
cried out, but the girl did not answer. Going into the barn, he stopped
suddenly; there he found his poor daughter dead, on her bed of straw.
Her rosary was entwined around her fingers and her face was shining like
an angel. She died as she had lived; without human comfort.

Meanwhile that same morning, the travelling
priest and the other two religious hurried to tell the villagers saying:
"Last night I saw a virgin going up to Heaven. She was wearing
a brilliant crown and was accompanied by a crowd of angels that were brighter
than the stars." Up to that time the villagers did not know
about anything special that happened in their town, but from the description
that the travellers gave, they knew at once that it was Germaine, the
holy shepherdess.

Running to the Cousin farm, the villagers
found that Germaine had died, but she was beautiful to look upon; God
had healed her body. She looked more like an angel than a person! Her
faithful friends, the children, had gathered wild carnations and stalks
of rye to make a wreath for her head. And the converted Madame Cousin
dressed her poor stepdaughter in a beautiful dress, and placed a candle
in her hands. Germaine's body was then buried in the village church where
she had loved to pray.

But this is not the end of the story. In
1644, forty-three years after Germaine's death, an older woman asked to
be buried in the church near the pulpit. Two workmen removed some flagstones
and they were surprised to see just below the surface, the body of a young
girl. Like madmen they ran through the village telling about their discovery
and bringing back a crowd of people with them. Two of the people who had
known Germaine during her life, testified that the body of the girl was
indeed that of the Germaine Cousin, the shepherdess. The body was then
removed and placed in a glass casket. Then it was put in the vestibule
of the church for all to see.

Devotion to Germaine grew and many people
prayed to her. In 1789, almost 200 years after her death, the French Revolution
had begun. The Masons; who are enemies of the Catholic Church, tried to
destroy everything that was Catholic. But they were having a hard time
destroying the faith of the people in the region of France where the body
of Germaine was honoured. To help destroy the Catholic Faith of these
people, three soldiers dug a hole and threw the body of Germaine into
the hole. Then they covered it with quicklime and dirt, to cause the body
of the holy girl to turn to dust.

Those who had performed this sacrilegious
deed were suddenly struck with different diseases. The neck of one soldier
was deformed so that it turned till his face looked backwards! And another
was scarcely able to walk without the aid of crutches. The third soldier
carried his punishment with him to his grave, but the other two soldiers
repented of their sin and obtained a complete cure through the prayers
of Germaine.

In spite of what the Revolutionaries had
done, the faithful continued to pray at the new grave of Germaine, the
holy shepherdess. After the revolution, her body was removed from the
grave and it was found to be as fresh as ever. Thanks to the power of
God, the quicklime had not injured Germaine's body in any way!

Many years later, because of all the miracles
which Germaine had obtained from God through her prayers, in June, 1867,
Blessed Pope Pius IX canonized her as a saint and made June 15th,
her special Feast Day. St. Germaine Pray for Us.

Saint Germaine Cousin is the patron
saint of victims of child abuse, a problem that continues to impact
millions of children world-wide each year, and an estimated 800,000
children in the United States. UNICEF estimates that nearly 20% of girls
and 10% of boys will be victims of physical or sexual abuse prior to
the age of 18. From this startling statistics, it is clear that our
world needs the intercession of Saint Germaine now, more than ever!

Thursday, May 15, 2014

The Story of St. Dymphna

Dymphna was the only child of a pagan
king who is believed to have ruled a section of Ireland in the 7th
century. She was the very picture of her attractive young Christian
mother.

When the queen died at a very young
age, the royal widower's heart remained beyond reach of comfort. His
moody silences pushed him on the verge of mental collapse. His
courtiers suggested he consider a second marriage. The king agreed on
condition that his new bride should look exactly like his former one.

His envoys went far a field in search
of the woman he desired. The quest proved fruitless. Then one of them
had a brilliant idea: Why shouldn't the king marry his daughter, the
living likeness of her mother?

Repelled at first, the king then
agreed. He broached the topic to his daughter. Dymphna, appalled,
stood firm as a rock. "Definitely not." By the advice of St. Gerebern,
her confessor, she eventually fled from home to avoid the danger of her
refusal.

A group of four set out across the
sea - Father Gerebern, Dymphna, the court jester and his wife. On
landing at Antwerp, on the coast of Belgium, they looked around for a
residence. In the little village of Gheel, they settled near a shrine
dedicated to St. Martin of Tours.

Then spies from her native land
arrived in Gheel and paid their inn fees with coins similar to those
Dymphna had often handed to the innkeeper. Unaware that the men were
spies, he innocently revealed to them where she lived.

The king came at once to Gheel for
the final, tragic encounter. Despite his inner fury, he managed to
control his anger. Again he coaxed, pleased, made glowing promises of
money and prestige. When this approach failed, he tried threats and
insults; but these too left Dymphna unmoved. She would rather die than
break the vow of virginity she had made with her confessor's approval.

In his fury, the king ordered his men
to kill Father Gerebern and Dymphna. They killed the priest but could
not harm the young princess.

The king then leaped from his seat
and with his own weapon cut off his daughter's head. Dymphna fell at
his feet. Thus Dymphna, barely aged fifteen, died. Her name appears in
the Roman Martyrology, together with St. Gerebern's on May 15.

In the town of Gheel, in the
Flemish-speaking region of Belgium, great honor is paid to St. Dymphna,
whose body is preserved in a silver reliquary in the church which bears
her name. Gheel has long been known as a place of pilgrimage for
persons seeking relief or nervous or emotional distresses. In our
century, the name of St. Dymphna as the heavenly intercessor for such
benefits is increasingly venerated in America.

The remains of Saint Dymphna were later put into a silver reliquary and placed in the Gheel church named in her honour. The remains of Saint Gerebernus were moved to Xanten, Germany. During the late 15th century the original St. Dymphna's Church in Gheel
burned, and necessity obliged the erection of the magnificent "Church
of St. Dymphna," which was consecrated in 1532 and now still stands on
the site where her body was first buried.

A phenomenon is said to have occurred immediately after the finding
of the tombs. A number of people with epilepsy, mental illnesses and
persons under evil influences who had visited at the tomb of Dymphna
were cured. Ever since that time, she has been invoked on behalf of such
people.

St. Dymphna is the patron saint of the nervous, emotionally disturbed,
mentally ill, and those who suffer neurological disorders - and,
consequently, of psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists. She is
also the patron saint of victims of incest.

Good Saint Dymphna, great wonder-worker in every affliction of
mind and body, I humbly implore your powerful intercession with Jesus
through Mary, the Health of the Sick, in my present need. (Mention it.)
Saint Dymphna, martyr of purity, patroness of those who suffer with
nervous and mental afflictions, beloved child of Jesus and Mary, pray to
Them for me and obtain my request. (Pray one Our Father, one Hail Mary and one Glory Be.) Saint Dymphna, Virgin and Martyr, pray for us.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Kirk Cameron clearly loves Jesus. This short memorial for a child speaks to the question most folks have regarding why God permits suffering and evil in the world. I can't imagine the absolute powerhouse Kirk would be if he were a Catholic with the fullness of Faith with all 7 Sacraments and the True Presence of our Eucharistic Lord! His conclusions are clearly Catholic in that suffering came into the world as a result of disobedience and sin and that any suffering and evil is permitted in order to bring about a greater good for the honor and glory of God and our own salvation. He brings up some good points, worth watching. Blessings! :)

(Unavoidably two pop ups redirecting to something will happen ... just close them and click the X to "hide the ad", ignore the 'missing plug in' ploy and you should be all set!)

Saturday, April 5, 2014

St. Vincent Ferrer was born at Valencia, in Spain on
the 23rd
of January,
1350. Excitement foreshadowed the child's birth. His mother,
Constance, experienced only joy and painlessness during her expectancy;
furthermore, his father had a prophetic dream in which an unknown
Dominican preacher appeared to him and told him that he would have a son
whose fame would be world-renowned. Also, a poor blind woman predicted
that the child Constance bore within her was an "angel who would one
day restore her sight" – which he did years later. St. Vincent brought
with him into the world a happy disposition for learning and piety,
which improved from his cradle by study and a good education. In order
to subdue his passions, he fasted rigorously from his childhood every
Wednesday and Friday. The passion of Christ was always the object of
his most tender devotion. The Blessed Virgin he ever honored as his
spiritual mother. Looking on the poor as the members of Christ, he
treated them with the greatest affection and charity, which caused his
parents to make him dispenser of their bountiful alms. His father
having proposed to him the choice of a religious state, an
ecclesiastical, or a secular state, Vincent without hesitation said it
was his earnest desire to consecrate himself to the service of God in
the Order of St. Dominic. His good parents with joy conducted him to a
convent of that Order in Valencia, and he put on the habit in 1368, in
the beginning of his eighteenth year.

He made a surprisingly rapid progress in the paths of
perfection, taking
St. Dominic for his model. To the exercises of prayer and penance, he
joined
the study and meditation of the Holy Scriptures and the readings of the
Fathers. For three years, he read only the scriptures and knew the
whole
Bible by heart. Soon after his solemn profession, he was appointed to
read
lectures of philosophy, and, at the end of his course, published a
treatise
on Dialectic Suppositions, being not quite twenty-four years old. He
was
then sent to Barcelona, where he continued his scholastic exercises, and
at the same time preached the word of God with great fruit, especially
during a great famine, when he foretold the arrival of two vessels
loaded
with corn the same evening to relieve the city, which happened, contrary
to all expectation. From thence he was sent to Lerida, the most famous
university of Catalonia. There, continuing his apostolic functions and
education, he received his doctorate, receiving the cap from the hands
of Cardinal Peter de Luna, legate of Pope Clement VII, in 1378, being
twenty-eight
years of age. At the earnest requests of the bishop, clergy and the
people
of Valencia, he was recalled to his own country, and pursued there both
his lectures and his preaching with such extraordinary reputation, so
manifestly
attended with the benediction of the Almighty, that he was honored in
the
whole country above what can be expressed. As a humiliation, God
permitted
an angel of Satan to molest him with violent temptations of the flesh,
and to fill his imagination with filthy ideas. The arms which the saint
employed against the devil were prayer, penance, and a perpetual
watchfulness
over every impulse of his passions. As he grew into manhood it was said
that his countenance was beautiful and radiant, which reflected the
beauty of a soul filled with the love of God. Even in his old age, this
radiance never left him. He was most radiant, however, when he gave a
sermon on the Mother of God or the joys of Heaven. He was firmly
devoted to the Passion and enjoyed a childlike devotion to Mary, which
included a faithful observance of praying the Angelus. His heart was
always fixed on God and
he made his studies, labor, and all his actions a continued prayer. The
same practice he proposes to all Christians in his book entitled,
A Treatise on a Spiritual Life, in which he
writes thus: "Do you desire to study to your advantage? Let devotion accompany all your studies
and study less to make yourself learned than to become a saint."

Consider some of the phrases in this marvelous book. "What is
meritorious is not that a man should be poor, but that, being poor, he
should love poverty." "A vain question deserves nothing but silence.
So learn to be silent for a time; you will edify your brethren and silence
will teach you to speak when the hour is come." "Regard yourself
as more vile and miserable in the sight of God because of your faults than
any sinner whatever, no matter what his sins... and consider closely
that any grace or inclination to good or desire of virtue you may have,
is not of yourself but of the sole mercy of Christ." "Try to
convince yourself that there is no crime-laden sinner but would have served
God better than you... if he had received the same graces." "Once
humility is acquired, charity will come to life – a burning flame devouring
the corruption of vice and filling the heart so full that there is no place
for vanity."

Missionary Travels

Before the end of the year 1392, St. Vincent being forty-two years
old, set out from Avignon towards Valencia. He preached in every town with
wonderful efficacy; and the people having heard him in one place followed
him in crowds to others. Public usurers, blasphemers, debauched women,
and other hardened sinners everywhere were induced by his discourses to
embrace a life of penance. He converted a great number of Jews and Mohammedans,
heretics and schismatics. He visited every province of Spain in this manner,
except Galicia. He went thence into Italy, preaching on the
coasts of Genoa, in Lombardy, Piedmont, and Savoy, as he did in part of
Germany, about the Upper Rhine and through Flanders. Numerous wars and
the unhappy great schism in the Church had been productive of a multitude
of disorders in Christendom; gross ignorance and a shocking corruption
of manners prevailed in many places, whereby the teaching of this zealous
apostle, who, like another Boanerges, preached in a voice of thunder, became
not only useful but even absolutely necessary, to assist the weak and alarm
the sinner. The ordinary subjects of his sermons were sin, death, God's
judgments, hell, and eternity. He delivered his discourses with so much
energy that he filled the most insensible with terror. A great number of
his sermons have come down to us, some in Latin and many in the vernacular.
By them one seizes the man and the saint to the life. They are masterpieces
of naturalness, intelligence, picturesqueness and, at moments, poetry.
In their kind there is nothing better. And they all develop one same theme.

First of all, there is sin as he had known it in the
world under its
seven root forms, stripped of all its pretenses and of its false
promises
of delight. After that comes penance, which can drive out sin or at
least
dull the sharpness of its edge, fortifying us against sin's assaults and
uniting with the Blood of Christ to plead for us before the Throne of
God.
Finally is the Judgment with its alternative for those who have done
evil – Purgatory or Hell. That inevitable judgment, which awaits each
one of
us in the moment of death, he made concrete and dramatic by building it
into one thing with the terrible picture of the universal Judgment, the
Last Judgment, when Christ will appear on the clouds of heaven to summon
the living and the dead to that damnation or glory. He showed it in all
its splendor, all its horror – in that light which is beatitude or
torment,
which ravishes the soul or burns it without end. Punishment is certain;
punishment is at hand. It is coming towards us relentlessly. Every day
we live brings it one day closer. It may be upon us in an hour, in a
second.
He felt it so and he made sinners tremble with the feeling. He returned
to
this theme frequently and on great occasions.
"Yes," you will say, "he wanted to frighten them."
He did indeed want to frighten them because he himself was afraid. And
as his fear for himself grew less, his fear for them grew greater. Not,
alas, that he believed himself just. How could he when he still had
life
before him and might still, therefore, fail? And if he failed that
day?
What if God held him responsible for the sins of his brethren because he
had not succeeded in raising and fortifying them in virtue?

At his sermons he was frequently obliged to stop to
give leisure for
the sobs and sighs of the congregation. His sermons were not only
pathetic,
but were also addressed to the understanding and supported with a
wonderful
strength of reasoning and the authorities of scriptures and fathers,
which
he perfectly understood and employed as occasion required. His gift of
miracles and the sanctity of his penitential life gave to his words the
greatest weight. Amidst these journeys and fatigues, he never ate
flesh;
fasted every day except Sundays, and on Wednesdays and Fridays he lived
on bread and water, which course he held for forty years; He lay on
straw
or small twigs. He spent a great part of the day in the confessional,
with
incredible patience, and there finished what he had begun in the pulpit.
We have the testimony of John of Plascenia, who was with him for some
time, that he read souls like an open book.

He had with him five friars of his Order and some other priests to
assist him. Though by his sermons thousands were moved to give their possessions
to the poor, he never accepted anything himself and was no less scrupulous
in cultivating in his heart the virtue and spirit of obedience than that
of poverty, for which reason he declined accepting any dignity in the church
or superiority in his Order. He labored thus nearly twenty years, until
1417, in Spain, Majorca, Italy, and France. During this time, preaching
in Catalonia, among other miracles, he restored the use of his limbs to
John Soler, a crippled boy, judged by the physicians incurable, who afterwards
became a very eminent man and Bishop of Barcelona. In the year 1400 he
was at Aix, in Provence, and, in 1401, he was in Piedmont and the neighboring
parts of Italy, being honorably received in the obedience of each pope.
Returning into Savoy and Dauphine, he found there a valley called Valpute,
or Valley of Corruption, in which the inhabitants were abandoned to cruelty
and shameful lusts. He joyfully exposed his life among these abandoned
wretches, converted them all from their errors and vices, and changed the
name of the valley to Valpur, or Valley of Purity, which name it ever after
retained. He preached two or three times every day, preparing his sermons
while he was on the road. He worked for three months, traveling from village
to village and from town to town in Dauphine announcing the word of God,
making a longer stay in three valleys in the diocese of Embrun, namely,
Lucerna, Argenteya, and Valpute, having converted almost all the heretics
which peopled those parts. Being invited in the most pressing manner into
Piedmont, he, for thirteen months, preached and instructed the people there,
in Montserrat and the valleys, and brought to the Faith a multitude of
Vaudois and other heretics. He says that the general source of their heresy
was ignorance and want of an instructor, and cries out, "I blush and
tremble when I consider the terrible judgment impending on ecclesiastical
superiors who live at their ease in rich palaces, while so many souls redeemed
by the Blood of Christ are perishing. I pray without ceasing the Lord of
the harvest that He send good workmen into His harvest." He adds
that
he had in the valley of Luferia converted a heretical bishop by a
conference,
extirpated a certain infamous heresy in the valley Pontia, converted the
country into which the murderers of St. Peter, the martyr, had fled,
reconciled
the Guelphs and Gibelins, and settled a general peace in Lombardy.
Being
called back into Piedmont by the bishops and lords of that country, he
stayed five months in the dioceses of Aoust, Tarentaise, St. John of
Morienne
and Grenoble. He says he was then at Geneva, where he had abolished a
very
inveterate superstitious festival – a thing the bishop dared not attempt
– and was going to Lausane, being called by the bishop to preach to
many
idolaters who adored the sun and to heretics, who were obstinate,
daring,
and very numerous on the frontiers of Germany.

Conversions of the Moors and Jews

The saint was honored with the gift of tongues.
Preaching in his
own, he was understood by men of different languages, which is affirmed
by Lanzano, who says that Greeks, Germans, Sardes, Hungarians, and
people
of other nations declared they understood every word he spoke, though he
preached in Latin or his mother tongue, as spoken at Valencia. There is
another marvelous fact which is beyond normal explanation. However far
away people might be, everyone heard every syllable. He could make
himself
heard literally about three miles away, when it was of importance that
he should be heard. He also worked many wonders through the Sign of the
Cross and through the Holy Name of Jesus. He warned lazy Christians who
sloppily made a circular sign of the Cross that they were using a sign
of the Devil instead!

The Moorish king had heard of him; the multitude of his miracles was
startling, and for a good Moslem, upsetting. He could not get Vincent out
of his head. Finally he decided he must see the man who worked the miracles.
He sent for him. The saint arrived lame from a great sore in the leg and
rode on his moth-eaten old donkey through all the splendors of the Alhambra
grounds under the fixed stare of the marble lions. The King wanted to hear
him preach. That in itself was a revolution. They murmured, they listened,
and doubtless they understood though he spoke no Arabic. For, after three
sermons, eight thousand Moors asked for baptism. Some of the nobles, fearing
the total subversion of their religion, obliged the king to dismiss him.
He then labored in the kingdom of Aragon and again in Catalonia, especially
in the diocese of Gironne and Vich; in a borough of the latter, he renewed
the miracle of the multiplication of loaves, related at length in his life.
At Barcelona, in 1409, he foretold to Martin, King of Aragon, the death
of his son, Martin, the King of Sicily, who was snatched away in the middle
of his triumphs in the month of July. Vincent comforted the afflicted father
and persuaded him to a second marriage to secure the public peace by an
heir to his crown.

He cured innumerable sick everywhere and, at Valencia, made a dumb
woman speak but told her she should ever remain dumb and that this was
for the good of her soul, charging her always to praise and thank God in
spirit, to which instructions she promised obedience. He converted the
Jews in great numbers in the diocese of Valencia, in the kingdom of Leon,
as Mariana relates. It is difficult to arrive at a figure. The most cautious
of his historians give twenty-five thousand converts among the Jews and
eight thousand among the Moors. "You know," Vincent announced
from the pulpit, "that we have good news. All the Jews and many of
the Moors of Valladolid are converted." There was similar news from
Toledo, Huesca, Saragossa... This was after the Congress of Tortosa
for the conversion of Israel, suggested to Benedict by a former rabbi,
Josua Holuorqui, who had become Friar Jerome of the Holy Faith. It met
in 1414 and was the occasion of interminable arguments – sixty-seven
sessions – between rabbis and religious. Vincent, who took part in the
Congress,
collaborated in a Treatise on the Jews which served as a base for his
further
labors among them; in it all the proofs of the Dogma of the Incarnation
were magisterially set forth. The Pope presided. The populace were
massed
on the river bank; Master Vincent had taken up his stand to preach on
the
roof of a house surrounded by trees on the far side of the Ebro. One
day
he stopped suddenly in his sermon. The people were startled. "Do not
be shocked by this interval," he said, "I must wait upon grace."
As the crowd began to laugh, a party of Jews were seen approaching: Grace
had conquered them. Of sixteen rabbis, fourteen were converted. How he
loved these new children of his; he loved to remind Christians who too
readily forgot the fact that Jesus and Mary were of the Jewish race.

He was invited to Pisa, Sienna, Florence and Lucca in 1409, whence,
after having reconciled the dissensions that prevailed in those parts,
he was recalled by John II, King of Castille. In 1411, he visited the kingdoms
of Castille, Leon, Murcia, Andalusia, Asturias and other countries; in
all of these places the power of God was manifested in His enabling him
to work miracles and effect the conversion of an incredible number of Jews
and sinners. The Jews of Toledo, embracing the faith, changed their synagogue
into a church under the name of Our Lady's. From Valadolid, the saint went to Salamanca in
the beginning of the year 1412. There he met a procession with a bier and the corpse of a
man who had been murdered. In the presence of a great multitude, he commanded the deceased to
arise and the dead man instantly revived. For a monument of this miracle a wooden
cross was erected and is yet to be seen on the spot. In the same city, the
saint entered the Jewish synagogue with a cross in his hand. Filled with the Holy Ghost,
he made so moving a sermon that the Jews,
who were at first surprised, all desired baptism at the end of his discourse
and changed their synagogue into a church to which they gave the title
of the Holy Cross.

Extraordinary Miracles

As a good Dominican, Master Vincent loved to proclaim the all-powerfulness
of the Rosary. "Who observes this practice," he said, "is
beyond the reach of adversity." He told the case of a very pious
merchant who would say the rosary from morning to night, even to the neglect
of his business. One day he was captured by brigands and, knowing that
his hour was come, he humbly asked for a little moment to pray. Hardly
had he begun when the Blessed Virgin came to him accompanied by St. Catherine
carrying a tray of roses and St. Agnes with a needle and a ball of thread.
The brigands, needless to say, opened their eyes wide. At each Ave the
prisoner recited, the Blessed Virgin took a rose from the plate, pierced
it with the needle, slipped it on to the thread. Thus, she made a wreath
which she placed on the prisoner's brow. As he happened to have his eyes
closed, he did not see the wreath, but he smelt its fragrance. The Virgin
and the two saints went off and the merchant offered them his neck, saying,
"Now you can strangle me." "Strangle you?"
said the
brigands. "Who were those beautiful women? You must be a holy man;
remember us in your prayers." Then they restored his goods and went
away converted. When he spoke of the Mother of Men, Vincent was
transfigured. He used to tell the case of a schoolboy who wanted at
all costs to see her.
An angel warned him that if he did so, he would lose an eye. He
accepted
and lost an eye. Then he asked to see her again, though it meant the
loss
of the other eye, which also took place. But when he was thus
completely
blind, the Blessed Virgin restored both eyes.

The people had recourse to him in every difficulty:
The smallest villages
fought to have him. In one place they took his hat, which assured
pregnant
women of a safe and easy delivery; in others, he drove away a cloud of
grasshoppers
and a whole army of weevils with holy water. Once he came to the point
of utter exhaustion. He could go no further. And heaven came to his
aid.
In the very heart of a wild lonely forest an excellent hotel appeared
suddenly from nowhere to shelter him; leaving it the next day, he
happened
to forget his hat. One of the penitents went back to the inn to get
it, but there was no inn – the hat was hanging on the branch of a tree
at the very spot where the inn had stood. The following year he came to
Murcia. According to the Bishop's report, which has come down to us,
almost no one remained untouched by the grace of the Spirit that filled
all the air. In that province there was an end for that time of
gambling, debauchery, conspiracy, quarreling, and murder. How could
anyone fail to follow the example of a Moor who promised to embrace the
faith if the pyre he had lighted in the main square was extinguished at
Vincent's prayer? Vincent prayed; the flames went out.

"It is an immense enterprise," as one historian has noted,
"to write a life of which every incident was a miracle." Yes,
everything in that life, ordinary things as well as extraordinary, was touched
with miracles, and the greatest miracle in his life was that life itself,
in its daily texture, was so burdened, toil-filled, and various; so continuously
under fire, yet so steady and undeviating – in the midst of schism, in
the midst of anarchy, under the sulfurous illumination of the Last Judgment,
which tragic coming his own life may very well have helped to postpone.
Consider the framework of his days. He rose usually at two in the morning
for the night office, recited his psalms, prayed, meditated, went to confession
– each morning – and scourged himself, thus purging his soul and chastising
his body. Mass was at six o'clock, then three hours preaching, visits to
the sick, mediations between parties in lawsuits and families at odds,
final words of advice to souls he had just converted or brought back to
grace: Then once more on the road. Picture him on the road: In rain or
sunshine, his feet in wooden stirrups attached to the saddle by cords which
cut into his legs, the unending dust from the trampling of the crowd, the
chanting of psalms and the never ending crunch of feet, and the incidents
and the accidents and the care he must have for all his vast company. There
was one meal a day – soup and a tiny piece of fish, washed down with wine
liberally watered. He never had an evening meal. Then he arrives at the
next village to be won to our Lord, the next town to be set in order. The
usual tumult and acclamations and idle questions and plain annoyances besieged
him – clipping pieces out of his habit, kissing his hands – and everybody
taking possession of him – a hundred people if there were a hundred, a
thousand if there were a thousand, more if there were more, as many as
there might be. Then there was the usual platform where he must say in
the evening what he had said in the morning, differently phrased but just
as fresh and convincing, and the usual miracles which he must always be
asking of God when his eloquence gained nothing or not enough – for unless
it gained everything, there always remained something still to gain: God
must attend to it – and that meant miracles. The crowd was at last disposed
of, but, before going to bed – five hours sleep, never more, and no siesta,
not even in Spain – he still had to make his meditation, get his office
said, instruct and direct his companions, prepare tomorrow's sermons, deal
with his post, get off answers to bishops, princes, city magistrates, directors
of confraternities, priors of convents, the Pope himself and any number
of mere nuisances – on every conceivable subject, by no means always concerned
with religion. And, in addition, you should reckon the time he loved to
devote to religious ceremonies – for he was a convinced liturgist and would
have his ceremonies as correct and as magnificent as possible. This gives
some idea of the routine of his days – week after week, month after month,
for twenty years. And he held and did not break. He said one day to a group
of priests, "The moment you wake, to God's work! Identify yourselves
with Christ. At such an hour, He was brought before Pilate, at such an
hour the Jews cried out against Him, at such another hour, He gave up the
ghost."

That indeed was the secret of his own resistance. We may be certain
that he followed to the letter the precious counsel he gave others, followed
it hour by hour exactly, passionately and simply. Living the passion of
Christ in his body, heart and mind, he found all things came easily; almost
pleasantly. Christ was the other self within him: His words, works, sufferings,
flowed as freely from Christ as his miracles. Hence the humility that lived
within his awareness of his greatness; hence his patience against all the
difficulties of life, all the trials of faith, and all the disappointments
of Charity; hence the superabundance of gifts which on the human plane
overflowed in achievement and on the divine plane blazed forth in miracles.

He came one time to the bedside of a sinner, to assist him in his last
agony. The sinner clung to the saint; he felt that his tardy remorse, his
imperfect contrition, his absence of penance, were insufficient to save
him unless St. Vincent threw the whole of himself into the scale. He begged
Vincent to make over to him a good share of the treasures of grace he had
compiled. The saint had pity on his despair. He said: "I give God
all my merits to be applied to you." "Is that true?" The
dying man was mistrustful: He did not know that what a saint says is definite.
"Then write it down for me on a slip of paper. The saint cheerfully
did what he was asked and the man died clutching his precious document.
Logically, Vincent had nothing left – he must begin to pile up another
lot of graces to himself. But a few days later, while he was preaching,
a paper whirled in the air above the heads of the crowd, like a dead leaf
blown along by the wind. Finally it settled on the preacher's cloak. I
need not tell you what it was. God had decided to pay for the sinner's
salvation in a different coin. He returned Vincent his merits along with
his check. For you never lose by the gift of one's self unless you only
half give it.

Whoever approached Vincent felt something about him, like the hot breath
of a hidden fire. So it was with the boy at Caen, possessed by devils from
the day when a careless barber had pierced a tumor. The boy had lost the
use of speech, did not eat or drink, and had no bodily motions except the
blood that spurted from his nostrils whenever he was angered. If they beat
him, he felt nothing. He grew physically, but in a frightful solitude of
a human being who knew no human contact or communication, nor pain nor
pleasure. Then Vincent came to him and touched him. "What do you feel,
my son?" he asked. And the child, set free of what had possessed him,
cried: "Father, I feel God's good pleasure which is accomplished at
this moment." God's good pleasure passed through that hand which He
never withheld.

At Pampeluna, they had just condemned an innocent man to death. Vincent
pleaded for him in vain. As he was being led to the scaffold, they passed
a corpse being taken to burial on a stretcher. Vincent suddenly addressed
the corpse: "You who have no longer anything to gain by lying, is
this man guilty? Answer me!" The dead man sat up and affirmed, "He
is not." Then Vincent, to reward him for that service, offered the
dead man, who was settling down again on the stretcher, to give him back
the burden of earthly life. "No, Father," he replied, "for
I am assured of salvation." And he went off to sleep again and was
carried to the cemetery.

There is another episode stranger still if not more marvelous. It happened
at Gerona. In the thick of the crowd stood a man somber, glowering, rage
stamped on every feature: Near him was his wife with an infant in her arms,
still at the breast. The man was devoured by a frenzy of jealousy. Brother
Vincent saw him, saw what fire burned in him, and preached upon Jealousy.
Suddenly he turned to the man. "You doubt your wife's faithfulness,
do you not? You think this child is not yours? Well, watch!" Then
he cried in a great voice to the child: "Embrace your father!"
The infant stirred, stood upright, turned towards the man and held out
its arms. And thus was the man cured and the family peace restored.

It seems that he touched each heart at the point he chose, the point
that charity suggested to him, and invariably at the precise moment. He
knew for example that a shepherd in the heart of the mountains had so great
confidence in him that he came to hear him, leaving his flock, only staying
to draw a circle round them with his staff – counting on the saint to see
that the sheep did not go out of the circle or the wolves come into it.
Vincent knew it, whether he had guessed it or read it in the man's eyes;
or perhaps God revealed to him the poor shepherd's naive arrangement and
let him know that He meant to grant his prayer. At any rate, Vincent told
him before all the crowd: "Your sheep are safe; God is watching over
them." Similarly, we are told that mothers did not hesitate to leave
their babies to come to his sermons: They confided the infants to the angels
– as Vincent advised them to. He doubted nothing, this man – God least
of all.

There was the very famous miracle of the wine cask which would not
run dry while the crowd of Vincent's followers still needed to drink. It
is worth adding that ten years later, the owner of the cask, the Seigneur
Saint-Just, met a man who gave evidence in the canonization process and
assured him that in all those years he had given that miraculous wine to
the sick: That no matter what their malady, they were cured: That the wine
grew no less though he drew from the cask every day. It would seem that
charity once installed in that cask was unwilling to leave it. Charity
indeed he left behind him everywhere, impregnating everything he touched.
Once, for lack of alms – his purse being empty – he gave a poor woman his
hat. "Thank you... But what do you expect me to do with it?"
Anyhow she took it away with her and that evening, at the gates of Valencia,
it struck her to put it on the head of an inn-keeper who was unwilling
to give her lodging. He was in an evil temper, having a raging headache.
"Perhaps Master Vincent's hat will cure it." It did. The inn-keeper
put it aside to use when the need should arise again. The hat was to be
seen for long after but in a pitiable condition – for he had had the notion
of soaking it in water from time to time and it seems that this incredible
hat-broth had cured his customers of all sorts of minor ailments.

Sometimes one asks oneself if it is possible to believe, so enormous
are some of the things we are told he did. The miracle at Morella, for
instance, is an exact reproduction of the famous miracle of St. Nicholas
when he brought back to life the three children in the salting-tub. One
is tempted to think that some unscrupulous biographer made the whole thing
up. Here is the story. There was a certain woman of great virtue but subject
to attacks of nerves, which came very close to madness. One day, in the
absence of her husband who had the preacher lodged in the house and had
gone out to hear him preach, her mental affliction came upon her and she
cut her small son's throat. She then went on to chop him up and roasted
a portion of him. This she gave to her husband on his return from listening
to the sermon. The man found out somehow what had happened, and at the
last point of horror and disgust, rushed out to tell the saint. Vincent
realized at once that heaven could not have allowed a happening so monstrous
save as an occasion for a most signal manifestation of God's power. He
came, prayed, gathered together the bleeding pieces of the child and said
to the father, "If you have faith, God who created this little soul
from nothing can bring him back to life." He fell on his knees and
the impossible happened. The child was alive again, whole and entire.

Consider the story of the two men consumed at Zamora. These were two
criminals before whom Master Vincent preached for three hours in the presence
of an enormous crowd. We know that he brought them to such a horror of
their crime, depicted with such cruel and gripping realism the flames of
hell, that when the guards came to bring them back to prison they found
only two charred corpses. Remorse – and, we may hope, repentance – had
literally consumed them. They were buried in front of the steeple beneath
two stones which stood for centuries to attest the fact. One day a Portuguese
man who passed that way and to whom the story was told, shrugged his shoulders
skeptically. "I will believe it," he cried, "when one of
the immense stones splits." He tapped one with the toe of his boot
and it split clean in two from top to bottom. Since that is the story we
are told, why not? At any rate, when you are dealing with miracles, do
not commit the vulgarity of dragging in the question of likelihood.

Yes, the blind see; the deaf hear; paralytics walk; the plague-stricken
are healed; the faithless believe; sinners repent; the unstable grow steadfast;
the idle find energy; sworn enemies embrace; the hard of heart find their
hearts on fire. And beside the miracles that affect men, storms are stilled,
rain stops, rocks are split, lightning flashes from the sky. Heaven itself
opens and saints, angels, the Mother of God and her Son come forth. What
must be must be – God will have it so. The prayer of a saint is omnipotent
– if God decides to grant it. "Christ can do nothing," cried
an obstinate sinner in Brothers Vincent's face. "I shall lose my soul
if I please." There was the claim of human liberty. "I shall
save you by Him, in spite of yourself," replied the preacher. There
was the claim of the omnipotence of a redemption purchased by the blood
of God. Vincent leaned over the crowd. "Say the Rosary!" The
Creed was said and the Our Father. The Hail Marys followed one another
on the beads. From Heaven, thus stormed by prayer, the Virgin Mother in
person descended, holding in her arms the Child Jesus – sobbing. At that
sight the sinner broke down, surrendered. The will for evil was conquered
without a struggle by the will of Grace.

Last Years

Normandy and Brittany were the theater of the apostle's labors the
two last years of his life. He was then so worn out and weak that he was
scarce able to walk a step without help; yet no sooner was he in the pulpit
but he spoke with as much strength, ardor, eloquence, and unction as he
had done in the vigor of his youth. He restored to health on the spot one
that had been bedridden eighteen years, in the presence of a great multitude,
and wrought innumerable other miracles, amongst which we may reckon as
the greatest the conversion of an incredible number of souls. He inculcated
everywhere a detestation of lawsuits, swearing, lying and other sins, especially
of blasphemy.

As his health started failing, his companions persuaded him to
return to his own country. Accordingly he set out with that view, riding
on an ass, as was his ordinary manner of traveling in long journeys. But
after they were gone, as they imagined, a considerable distance, they found
themselves again near the city of Vannes. Wherefore the saint perceiving
his illness increase, determined to return into the town, saying to his
companions that God had chosen that city for the place of his burial. The
joy of the city was incredible when he appeared again, but it was allayed
when he told them he had come, not to continue his ministry among them,
but to look for his grave. These words, joined with a short exhortation
which he made to impress on the people's mind their duty to God, made many
shed tears, and threw all into an excess of grief. His fever increasing,
he prepared himself for death by exercises of piety and devoutly receiving
the sacraments. On the third day the bishop, clergy, magistrates, and part
of the nobility made him a visit. He conjured them to maintain zealously
what he had labored to establish amongst them, exhorted them to perseverance
in virtue, and promised to pray for them when he should be before the throne
of God, saying he should go to the Lord after ten days. His prayer and
union with God he never interrupted. The magistrates sent a deputation
to him, desiring he would choose the place of his burial. They were afraid
his Order, which had then no convent in Vannes, would deprive the city
of his remains. The saint answered that, being an unprofitable servant
and a poor religious man, it did not become him to direct anything concerning
his burial; however, he begged they would preserve peace after his death,
as he always inculcated to them in his sermons, and that they would be
pleased to allow the prior of the convent of his Order which was the nearest
to that town to have the disposal of the place of his burial. He continued
his aspirations of love, contrition, and penance; and often wished the
departure of his soul from its fleshy prison, that it might the more speedily
be swallowed up in the ocean of all good. On the tenth day of his illness
he caused the passion of our Savior to be read to him, and after that recited
the penitential psalms, often stopping totally absorbed in God. It was
on Wednesday in Passion Week, the 5th of April, that he slept in the Lord,
in the year 1419. When he expired a host of little white butterflies fluttered around his head. These were little "angels"
to take the Angel of Judgment home and to attest to his purity and
holiness. There was even a "piercingly sweet odor" which arose from his
body. Joan of France, daughter of King Charles VI, Duchess
of Brittany, washed his corpse with her own hands. God showed
innumerable
miracles by that water and by the saint's habit, girdle, instruments of
penance, and other relics, of which the details may be read in the
Bollandists.

The death of St. Vincent Ferrer did not check the
flowing of the spring
which his merits and penances and love had opened in the rock of Mercy
inexhaustible. They laid two corpses in his tomb before they sealed it.
Just as the touch of his habit wrought miracles during his life, so did
the touch of his grave: two dead people were brought to life when placed
upon it! Nor is that an isolated
incident. The inquiry set on foot at Vannes for the process of his
canonization
brought to light an incredible mass of miraculous happenings, sudden
conversions,
cures, apparitions, and a surprising number of resurrections from the
dead.
Falls, drownings, murderous assaults, illnesses – he intervened in all
and was always being invoked.

Petition for his canonization was universal and immediate from kings,
bishops, universities, nobles and peasantry. Pope Nicholas V issued a bull
to inquire into the life, heroic sanctity and miracles of Saint Vincent. The
Duke of Brittany even levied a tax to defray expenses for the process.

According to Vincent's own prophecy, Alphonsus Borgia who was elected to the
Papacy and became Callixtus III, did indeed canonize him. The canonization was
held on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29, 1455, in the Dominican
Church of Rome, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. The body was found to be incorrupt on that day.
During the Mass of canonization, two dead persons were covered with the cloak in which Saint
Vincent had been buried. They were both restored to life. Also, the Duke of Brittany's
relative was cured of leprosy that day and a blind man was restored to sight.

Fifty years after St. Vincent's death, a boy of twelve,
Juan de Zuniga, died at Placenzia. A prayer to St. Vincent brought him
back to life. He lived to be Cardinal Archbishop of Seville. A cathedral
was built in commemoration of the event. On the day they were celebrating
the Saint's feast, the preacher failed to appear – he had suddenly fallen
ill. The embarrassment would have been serious only that a Dominican father,
absolutely unknown, appeared from nowhere and offered to take his place.
He went up into the pulpit, preached and was seen no more. It was St. Vincent
Ferrer, naturally, since he is always present upon earth, in action if
not in person. There seems to be no other possible explanation of the sudden
appearance and disappearance of the preacher.

During his life Saint Vincent freed more than seventy people from the
Devil and many more were freed at his tomb. He raised more than
twenty-eight people from the dead and four hundred sick people were
cured by resting on the couch where he had lain during his illness.

The change of a sinful heart is even a greater miracle than wondrous
temporal benefits. Saint Vincent was not wanting here as we have seen;
thousands of sinners became penitent, including Jews and Moors.

Wherein was the great success of this humble, friar-preacher? First,
he was a living image of the Crucified. He was gentle and patient and
never murmured a word of complaint. He loved poverty and his purity
consisted in excluding all thoughts that did not tend towards God. He
preserved this awesome purity by obedience. As great as he was, he
excelled more than anyone in submitting to his superiors. Second, he
was an imitator of his spiritual father, Saint Dominic. It was said of
Saint Dominic that he was "a light of the word, a dazzling reflection
of Jesus Christ, a rose of patience, another precursor and a master in
the science of souls." Vincent was a worthy disciple who would
himself protest that he was only imitating his holy founder. God is
glorified in His saints!

The Angel of the Apocalypse provides us with some valuable lessons. Of
course, no one knows the day nor the hour of the Second Coming, but we can
imitate Saint Vincent in his penitential life so as to be ready at all times
to meet Our Judge. We will have little to fear if we combine that
penitential life with the humility and love for Jesus and Mary that Saint
Vincent had. His intercession, once so powerful on earth, has surely only
increased in Heaven. Pray to him in confidence and he will no doubt
intercede for you before his beloved Master, Jesus Christ and his most
beautiful Queen, Mary, the Mother of God.

The great humility of this saint appeared amidst the honors and applause
which followed him. He lays down this principle as the preliminary to all
virtue that a person be deeply grounded in humility "For whosoever
will proudly dispute or contradict, will always stand without the door.
Christ, the master of humility, manifests His truth only to the humble
and hides Himself from the proud."

Only through the one, true religion has a dead person ever been brought
back to life. We see the first recorded accounts of the dead being raised
in the Old Testament; the great prophets Elias and Eliseus raised at least
three persons who had died.

In the New Testament, following the example of the Divine Founder of
our Holy Religion, Saints Peter and Paul also raised several persons from
the dead. The fact is that only through the Roman Catholic Church, from
the time of Our Lord until today, has anyone been brought back from the
grave! (Have you ever heard any reports of a Lutheran, Baptist, Jehovah's
Witness, Evangelical Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, etc. making any
such claim?)

The list of Catholic saints who have performed resurrection miracles
appears endless! (St. Hilary, St. Ambrose, St. Martin of Tours, St. Benedict,
St. Bernard, St. Anthony, just to name a few, and the tally goes on). St.
Vincent Ferrer raised at least twenty-eight persons. St. Joan of Arc brought
a stillborn baby back to life long enough for it to be baptized. St. Patrick
of Ireland raised nearly forty people from the dead many of whom had
been dead and buried for years.

Hundreds of these resurrection miracles are well documented and authenticated;
not only by Catholic sources, but also by many secular and historical records
as well.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Dear Child Jesus of Pichincha, I humbly kneel before Thee, worn and disillusioned by the world and all its empty pleasures and promises. I have left the warmth and joy of Thy house to eat husks with the swine.
I beseech Thee to purify my heart and restore my innocence. I humbly beseech Thy Loving and Gracious Heart to forgive, and even forget, my past and to grant me the grace to begin anew. I beg not only for my restoration, but for that of the world, and above all, for that of our beloved Holy Catholic Church, which is so beleaguered and persecuted.
Through the infinite merits of Thy Holy Childhood, I feel confident that my prayer will be answered.
Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be...

In 1628 Our Lady of Good Success, carrying the Christ Child, appeared to a nun in Quito, Ecuador and said: "Lift up your eyes now and look at Pichinicha Mountain where you will see this Divine Infant Whom I carry in my arms crucified."
The Christ Child approached the Cross, placed the crown of thorns on His Head, extended His arms on the Cross and said: "I can do no more to show my love for you. Ungrateful souls repay the great love and attentions of My Heart with contempt, sacrileges and blasphemies."

Living the Tradition of the Catholic Faith passed down through Apostolic succession from Jesus Himself. Like the website, this is dedicated to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts. However, this blog is also dedicated to my beloved parents: To my Father who always said I had a book in me and to my Mother who never let me forget it! ;)This blog is likely the closest I'll ever get to writing a book! ;)

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A request was made that I make a video tutorial on how to make a Macramé Rosary. 1st effort by myself and my brother, the camera man :)*** The tutorial shows and mentions #11 seed beads ... ERROR! LOL .. should be #6 seed beads! ***

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The Apostle, St. John tells us exactly how to recognize the spirit of truth from the spirit of falsehood. He says "as for them, they are of the world - and the world listens to them because they speak the language of the world. But we are children of God and those who know God: LISTEN TO US. Those who are not of God REFUSE TO LISTEN TO US. That is how we can tell the spirit of truth from the spirit of falsehood." ~1 John 4:6 [The "us" to whom St. John refers are the Apostles, and their successors the Bishops.]Abortion Alternative - The Adoption Movement"THE BORN SUPREMACY: OUR UNBORN IDENTITY"LUISA PICCARRETA ~ DIVINE WILLIt WILL change your life!

Prayer to avoid the Sin of PRIDE:“Oh My Jesus help me to avoid the sin of pride when I speak in Your Name. Forgive me if I ever belittle anyone in Your holy Name. Help me to listen Jesus when Your Voice is spoken and fill me with Your Holy Spirit so that I can discern the truth of Your Word when You call out to mankind. Amen.”A prayer of St. Teresa of Avila:O my God! Source of all mercy! I acknowledge Your sovereign power. While recalling the wasted years that are past, I believe that You, Lord, can in an instant turn this loss to gain. Miserable as I am, yet I firmly believe that You can do all things. Please restore to me the time lost, giving me Your grace, both now and in the future, that I may appear before You in "wedding garments." Amen.“My children, let your speech be chosen with great care—it must be a light in the world. Know and believe that all you say has repercussions in time and eternity. Therefore, choose your words with wisdom and prudence, choosing to remain silent rather than fill the air with useless chatter or worse, gossip or virulent speech. Let your speech be a perfect mirror of your peaceful heart, a heart firmly grounded in the love of God and in complete trust in His goodness. Silence is often the more virtuous path. Bridle your tongue and you will be working for peace in the world.”

In the Name of Jesus I renounce as lies all thoughts that enter my mind from the evil one who accuses. By the authority of Jesus, I command them to leave me. I consecrate my mind to God for transformation into His Thoughts for my protection, salvation and His glory.SWANSONS ONLINE - THE BEST QUALITY, SERVICE AND PRICES FOR ALL YOUR VITAMIN, SUPPLEMENT AND HERBAL NEEDS!!!! Been with them over 20yrs and LOVIN' IT! :)ZULILY ~ GREAT PRICES & GREAT STUFF!Father Donald Calloway's New Book: ROSARY GEMSCheck it out!

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It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
—Editorial, Pravda, April 27th, 2009;
http://english.pravda.ru/

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Just a Note:

Through the grace of God and many prayers, I survived a double surgery (with cancer) in the fall of 2008. Since then has becoming increasingly important to me to enhance my prayer life. I have taken on the task of praying for strangers and those with little hope and much adversity. To that end, I've also begun (July '09), to make rosaries and related items to put prayer into the hands of as many as I can that will PRAY for others.

The world is at the precipice ... we need to TAKE ACTION ... NOW. Time for fence sitting is quickly coming to an end. We all need to do what ever we can in the way of PRAYER & PENANCE to beg God's Grace upon humanity that we may shake away this sinfulness and pride to get back on the road that leads to heaven and our Glorious Triune God!

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After you have made a decision that is pleasing to God, the devil may try to make you have second thoughts. Intensify your prayer time, meditation, and good deeds. For if satan's temptations merely cause you to increase your efforts to grow in holiness, he'll have an incentive to leave you alone.~St. Ignatius of Loyola